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by Stephen Ritch

A Christmas fair toy stall organised by two families with children at Marown Primary School has raised £108.25 for Junior Achievement Isle of Man.

The Garrett family, Blair, five, Eilidh, eight, Magnus, 10 and mother Wendy joined forces with the Potts family, Ben, seven, Ellena, nine and mother Becky to support the charity, after the two mothers, both former teachers, saw how the ‘real world’ life skills Junior Achievement develops are of value to children of all ages.

Mrs Garrett explained: ‘Every year we collect for a different charity. On this occasion we raised money for Junior Achievement to give something back to them, as they come into the school annually for the benefit of our children.’
Junior Achievement Isle of Man is a Manx-registered charity. In the 2010-2011 academic year it ran 150 classes in 18 schools, reaching more than 4000 young people. Each year the charity needs to raise more than £300,000. For more details contact Sue Cook, suecook@jaiom.im, telephone 666266 or call in to Junior Achievement Isle of Man, Suite 2, Peterson House, Middle River, Douglas.

http://www.jaiom.im

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‘Toy Story’ Raises Funds for Junior Achievement

So now we’ve heard the State of the Union according to Obama and the State of the State according to John Hickenlooper. We’ve seen Gingrich’s debating prowess and Mitt Romney’s tax returns, Rick Santorum’s sweaters and Ron Paul’s scowl. But how much does that really tell us about the shape America is in?

If we’re not the land of the free, we’re nothing, right? Economists James Gwartney, Robert Lawson and Joshua Hall, like a team of doctors taking your vitals before surgery — the operation in this case being the potential removal of elected officials across the land — bring grim news that Americans’ freedom to better ourselves economically has slid drastically in this decade. Hardly the change we hoped for.

The authors’ Economic Freedom of the World 2011, a data-rich report from the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, B.C., uses five indicators to rank 141 countries on how well they allow you and me to work toward affluence, keep what we earn, and use it as we choose, free from government interference. Since 2000, our country fell down the scale faster than almost any nation on earth.

Notice that this occurred under various combinations of unified and divided control in Washington. The unrelenting trend, with bipartisan culpability, has been “liberty yielding and government gaining ground,” as Thomas Jefferson warned. Notice too that the report’s data end in 2009. The humongous deficits and health-care takeover since then have only worsened our score.

America still ranks 10th in the Fraser global index (exactly where we place in another valuable economic freedom scorecard just updated by the Heritage Foundation). But look who’s ahead of us: Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Chile, the United Kingdom and tiny Mauritius.

Then blush to see the company we’re in among the getting-less-free-fastest club: Only the Latin caudillo regimes of Venezuela and Argentina, and the North Atlantic basket cases of Iceland and Ireland, have regressed as badly as Uncle Sam has in recent years.

But not all the tidings are bad. Colorado, when ranked against our 49 sisters and the 10 Canadian provinces by another team of Fraser Institute scholars in Economic Freedom of North America 2011, trails only Alberta (the oil-rich neighbor whom President Barack Obama spurned with his Keystone pipeline veto), Delaware, Texas, and Nevada.

This result again, paralleling the experience in Washington, has been achieved even as party control seesawed at the state capitol. You can be sure that’s mostly because the Colorado Constitution, unlike the U.S. Constitution, has a Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights to restrain government growth.

And partisans on both sides shouldn’t forget that the North America scorecard (EFNA) has a two-year data lag, exactly as the world rankings do. Hence, it doesn’t reflect the Democrats’ “dirty dozen” tax increases in 2010, nor the Republicans’ sad 2011 performance with a state enabling bill for Obamacare and no effort to repeal for Gov. Bill Ritter’s car tax — er, fee.

Fraser rates the 60 states and provinces on 10 criteria under the headings of size of government, takings and discriminatory taxation, and labor market freedom. If Colorado had passed Right to Work in 2008, we’d rank even higher. And that’s not just a bragging point. EFNA includes statistical proof that living standards rise in a state with almost 1:1 correlation to the rise of economic freedom.

Occupying the best cabin on a sinking ship counts for little. If the Canadians, Brits, and Aussies continue outdistancing the U.S. in that precious freedom Jeb Bush has called “the right to rise,” all our red- and blue-state political cheering will be just so much white noise.

Andrews is director of the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University and former president of the Colorado Senate.

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GUEST COLUMN: Keeping score on Americans' declining freedom to succeed

Joggers enjoying the Australian lifestyle at Farm Cove, near Sydney Opera House. Picture: Lindsay Moller Source: The Sunday Telegraph

AUSTRALIA is the most popular place in the world for expats, despite the relatively lower earning potential the country offers, according to a global report.

International workers are attracted Down Under by the outdoor lifestyle, friendliness and work/life balance, according to the HSBC Expat Explorer report.

They are also more likely to stay longer or settle in Australia permanently than in other countries.

But Australians living overseas found that while the benefits of an offshore posting offer a more global outlook and greater financial rewards, it comes at the expense of lifestyle and wellbeing.

Australian expatriates said it was increasingly difficult to manage the pressures of work and life and they were generally less active since moving overseas.

More than 3000 expats from more than 100 countries responded to the annual survey, which looks at factors affecting lifestyle like accommodation, ease of organising finances, and the ability to make friends.

It found 10 per cent of expats chose Australia as the top destination for their next assignment, followed by the US, Singapore, Hong Kong and Canada.

The US and UK were chosen for financial gain.

HSBC Bank Australia head of retail banking and wealth management Graham Heunis said the report showed the importance of lifestyle factors in expat career choices.

"While financial rewards and career prospects are obviously important, the report suggests expats are putting lifestyle and wellbeing ahead of money and Australia wins hands down on this front,'' he said.

Australia ranked highly in terms of overall quality of life, work environment and ease of integration.

The report showed expats in Australia are twice as likely to stay or return to Australia in future than average.
 

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Australia number one for expats - report

The White House has a new election-year plan to stop companies from shopping overseas for tax havens.

While details remain sketchy, the concept outlined by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address seems crystal clear: Start taxing foreign profits.

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The administration figures that if the IRS gets to collect the money anyway, then multinationals have less of a reason to move jobs out of the country. The tax could deter companies from hopscotching around the world to whichever country cuts them the best deal.

“We are trying to discourage the race to the bottom,” explained White House economics adviser Gene Sperling. “We’re trying to discourage the notion that when somebody is thinking about where to locate production or services, that they should not believe that they can go to a tax haven as a way of having a tax advantage over a company that chose to stay in the United States.”

Still, with Congress and the White House at loggerheads at nearly every turn — and no expectation of change before the November elections — Obama’s tax call appears much more of a campaign rallying cry than a proposal on the verge of becoming law. The president clearly has positioned tax reform as a lever for lifting employment, blaming the exodus of work overseas on a misguided federal Tax Code.

“From now on, every multinational company should have to pay a basic minimum tax,” Obama told a joint session of Congress in his State of the Union address. “And every penny should go towards lowering taxes for companies that choose to stay here and hire here in America.”

In practice, though, tweaking taxes to boost employment might be easier said than done.

Corporate tax policy has become a source of tension for the administration. Union leaders objected last month when the president’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness recommended lowering tax rates to internationally competitive levels. Meanwhile, Obama’s call for a “basic minimum” tax on worldwide earnings could thwart any kind of consensus with Republicans on reforming the code.

Until the administration discloses more specifics around its 2013 budget proposal in a couple of weeks — like what the rate might be — Republican lawmakers and business leaders are reserving judgment. But not surprisingly, they have serious concerns.

Many congressional Republicans and several corporate executives on Obama’s own jobs council want the government to adopt some kind of territorial tax system, where the United States would not tax income earned outside its borders.

A territorial system would let companies bring foreign earnings home without being required to pay as much as 35 percent to the government. Business profits totaling $1.4 trillion are trapped overseas to avoid those taxes, according to JPMorgan Chase.

“If the rate is too high and the administration doesn’t intend to move to a territorial system like nearly all of our global competitors, then it is tough to imagine how this benefits American companies and the workers who we want to hire here at home,” a Republican congressional staffer told POLITICO.

The White House and congressional Republicans support the general idea of lowering corporate rates and eliminating some deductions to broaden the tax base. But because of the nation’s burgeoning deficit, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says companies shouldn’t count on a massive windfall from any changes.

“When we do tax reform, we’re going to have to be helping contribute to deficit reduction,” Geithner said in an interview that aired Sunday on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.” “We don’t have the ability of offering the American people or the American businesspeople community a net tax cut.”

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Bid to tax global profits political?

Westpac is the latest bank to trim staff numbers. Photo: Glenn Hunt

Westpac is cutting hundreds of jobs as part of its cost-cutting program, with Sydney facing the brunt of the redundancies.

The Finance Sector Union has confirmed that 560 jobs are set to go at Westpac, in the latest round of job cuts to hit the financial services sector this year.

BusinessDay understands the bank will be making an offical announcement this afternoon.

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"We're conducting consultations to a number of our employees around changes to Westpac," a spokeswoman for the bank said.

Westpac began consulting staff about their employment, and the Finance Sector Union said it had been informed of the bank's plans.

Jobs to be offshored

FSU national secretary Leon Carter said that, of the 560 jobs to be cut, about 150 lending operations jobs would be sent offshore.

The remaining 400 jobs were to be chopped from primarily backroom processing and general support roles over the next two to four months.

Mr Carter criticised the decision by the bank and implored the government to step in to support the industry.

"From our point of view, it's completely pathetic that an organisation that continues to make a multibillion-dollar annual profit thinks the only way through difficult times is to sacrifice Australian jobs on the altar of making more money," he said.

Mr Carter said the government should support the local finance industry with as much backing as it gave the manufacturing sector.

Unlike manufacturing, financial firms had the capacity to keep these jobs in the country because the finance sector was continuing to grow, he said.

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Cutting since late 2011

The staff briefings follow Westpac's decision to review 28 IT management roles in its wholly owned BT Financial Group and Westpac Institutional Bank last month as part of a group-wide restructure announced last November.

BusinessDay also understands that Westpac's business equipment finance division is one of the areas affected, with those jobs to be sent offshore.

The bank has been cutting jobs since the end of last year, when it shifted about 200 back-office jobs offshore.

On January 19, a spokeswoman for the bank said the bank planned to cull more positions this year.

"We can expect that staff numbers will decrease as we reduce higher cost contract-based staff and reduce duplication in roles at head offices," she said.

Thousands of jobs to go

Analysts from UBS tip that as many as 7000 banking jobs may be shed in Australia in the next two years, as demand for loans slows and households reduce debt levels.

ANZ Bank is expected to slash as many as 1000 jobs as it struggles with the weaker demand for loans and a slowing growth.

Employment in the banking sector has come under pressure this year, after the housing sector cooled through most of 2011, forcing management to trim costs rather than relying on growing credit for earnings. At the same time, job security is emerging as a political issue for the banks, which received backing from the government when the financial crisis in 2008.

Late last month, the protest group Occupy Sydney staged a demonstration in front of Westpac's office to protest at the bank's offshoring after a year of record profits.

Overseas, the falls in transaction levels as well as regulatory changes in Britain forced the Royal Bank of Scotland to jettison as many as 400 jobs in Australia.

Westpac's full-time equivalent staff levels fell from 35,055 in 2010 to 33,898 last year, according to the bank's annual reports.

The bank's shares were up 6 cents, or 0.3 per cent, at $20.91 in afternoon trade, underperforming both the broader market and the financial sector sub-index.

czappone@fairfax.com.au

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Westpac set to axe hundreds of jobs